A Story, Bones and Wings
by Deliriously Withdrawn
Summary: -Echo by Francesca Lia Block- Three different stories expanded on in Echo. 1. One boy Echo brings home. 2. Echo's father coming to get her after her phonecall from Berkley. 3. Storm's point of view on parts of the book. Read and Review please.
1. Story

A/N: Beta'd by alice laughed. This was written for a book report. I took excerpts from the book **Echo** by _Francesca Lia Block_. All character's associated with the novel are her's and not mine. I have rights though ti Michael and Raven.

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_But ever since I was a little girl I captured the neighborhood boys and made them sit in the basement and watch me. I dressed up in silk scarves and stolen underwear and played songs whose beat I could feel deep between my legs. While I danced a strange thing occurred. I would have visions of what happened to the boys. I saw boys being beaten, boys being shamed, boys crying, boys beating so they wouldn't cry. When the dance was over I would kiss the boys… _

His name was Michael. The first time I saw him he was running down the sidewalk, feet pounding the pavement. Each step slammed into the concrete with force, causing the muscles to ripple along his calves, thighs, quads…

His stark blue eyes were wide and innocent. His features were finely drawn and shaped, thin lips that were only as full as their shape would allow. Ringlets of mocha – brown hair framed his face, reminiscent of Michelangelo's angels that graced the sky that was the Sistine chapel.

Raven was the last boy in the basement. He was aptly named with his sleek, raven-black hair and sharp, angular, crook'd nose. His limbs were too thin, with sharp bones that looked like they hurt, or maybe they were about to poke out of his skin

He could not bear to look me in the eyes. He didn't want to accept what we both had seen in the basement. Someone's fists pounding into his beloved mother's flesh. Couldn't bear it. His fists flying into the punching bags, than the concrete walls, than another's flesh.

I placed the cassette in the stereo player. It had a throbbing beat and breathy vocals. It seemed to enhance your senses, lifting you up to whatever wings the singer was always talking about. I slightly adjusted the scarves I had stolen from my mother's gauzy outfits, the lingerie my father bought my mother but she never wore. Michael sat on the couch, slightly perplexed, but nonetheless intrigued by the little slip of a girl who pulled him away from his run.

I first felt the beat deep within my legs as I always did. I didn't dance, not yet. I felt it coursing through my body, pumping through my veins with my blood. It was my blood. I allowed the music to finally overtake before I began to dance. My hips began to sway, first as they always did. But not one dance was ever the same. They always differed. Depending on the boy. Depending on the vision.

As my limbs began to extend and shake, I glanced a look over at Michael before I let myself see his past, his present, his pain.

Pain

Tears

A hand

A cry

Whimper

Shouts

Breaking glass

A slap

A father watching his son as he plays with the other boys on the playground. Dad is silent the ride home in the car. The playground was a treat after a long day at school and at work. They get home, that's when Dad starts yelling. It comes from nowhere, the shouting. He was always quiet, placid with everyone. He screams and screams and screams and it doesn't seem like it's going to stop. Like the fireworks on the 4th, the finale just keeps going and the noise doesn't seem to ever stop. You close your eyes and it's worse because the ground trembles with the loudness of the noise and it scares you even more. He keeps talking about how he's never played with anyone else, just those boys. Mama tries to console Dad, telling him that "at this age girls have 'cooties.' He'll grow out of it.'" But Dad won't listen and begins throwing things from the cabinets: glass plates, cups, vases… He just stands there wondering why Dad is so upset. He turns to ask him and is rewarded by a harsh slap from Dad. The force throws him to the ground. And while Mama and I are stunned into silence Dad keeps yelling and yelling and yelling. I don't feel the pain, but it registers that Dad's yelling about me. The tears come to my eyes and I run out the door. I run and run and run.

I don't stop.

He comes home only when he has to, but Dad finds him in his room. When he hears the bang opening the door, he crouches against the closet door hoping Dad won't come in this time. He does, but it doesn't sting. It rarely stings anymore because running is always there waiting.

When he goes running, sometimes he sees the girl with blue-green hair. She reminds him of a Greek myth, or a lost mermaid, unwillingly plucked out of the forgiving sea. He sees her watching and she makes him forget that he doesn't know who is because of his father's screaming. Whether his father's screaming spouts truth or ugly lies.

He never knows what to feel or who to like. She makes him forget his mother's silence or pity-looks. He feels like himself for once when she watches. She lets him tune everyone but himself out. He just is, not defined by anything except for the pace he runs.

We are back in the basement. I feel the salt-tracks of tears down my face and I expect to see the same from my Michelangelo-Angel. But I don't. His head is back, neck extended, and a smirk of a smile on his lips. His legs are spread out in front of him, so that he is lying back now. His chest rises and falls, shaking with silent laughter.

I walk over to him, on his place on the couch, now clad only in a swatch of silver gauze. I kneel down beside where he was now laying. I press the back of my hand against his cheek, and his eyes remained closed. His mouth opens, just slightly and I kiss the corner of his mouth.

I find a tear caught there.


	2. Bones

I don't know where my beta is, she's disappeared, when/if she gets back to me – I'll repost the edited version. Same goes for the third chapter. : )

Original plot belongs to the goddess, the plot of this story, to the goddess inside of me.

EDIT: I edited this chapter for about the 3rd time myself. Alice Laughed is currently pregnant (her third, I believe). And as much as I wish her luck, I feel kinda left behind in the dust considering she didn't answer any of my previous e-mails. sigh Oh and I only found this out from reading her profile and author's notes by other stuff she's currently beta'd ('nother reason I feel ignored) since I've e-mailed her.

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I had tried not to let my father know about the cat in my stomach, the way my skin bruised at a touch, the metallic ache of my teeth. How the only thing that made me feel calm was seeing the scale register less and less weight. I didn't say that all I wanted was to move back home. Maybe I could help my mother take care of him. If he let me take care of him it might be as if he were taking care of me.

_It came out that night on the phone. I started crying to my mother and he took the phone away and made me tell him about the psychiatrist. The lost pounds. The cat, the bones, the metal, the box. And then I heard him speak, in a voice I had almost forgotten._

_He said, "Stop saying you're sorry, darling."_

_He had not called me that in years. He was going to get in the car, even though it hurt him to sit for too long, I knew that, and drive up to bring me home. He had waited until I stopped crying, stopped apologizing, and said, "There's only one condition. We're going to stop for a Foster's Freeze on the way. And you know how I hate eating desserts alone."_

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I lay on the bed, waiting. My half-lidded eyes created a blurred world of my room. The door was unlocked – it always was. Too many people knocking on the door all the time was a hassle. So it would have been surprising to hear the knock on the door (for no one knocked, knowing that the door was unlocked). It would have been – but I knew he was coming.

When I didn't reply to the knock on the door, the handle gently turned and the click of the door coming open echoed throughout the room. I closed my eyes, slightly curling even deeper into myself.

I felt a warm hand press on my forehead, and I consciously moved into the touch. Fingers moved through my hair, and I felt a pressure sink into the mattress beside me. I opened the eyes and saw the emaciated face of my father. He was wearing one of the silk berets that mother had made him, and the pain from sitting in the car showed in his eyes. But his smile, his smile reached his eyes and pulled my own into his, warming me.

He helped me to sit up, though I knew his arms were very weak and could not hold much weight. There was very little substance in his arms. It was like something that connected us. We were made of nothing but skin and bones. It was as if by painting 'Mister Bones' my father had known what our futures would hold.

Not a word was said. My bags were picked up and we walked outside, his light arm draped around my shoulders as they hunched over. I helped put my bags into the back seat. I was surprised as he got into the drivers seat; I knew that he was already in pain. I had thought that I was going to be driving, but apparently not.

I climbed into the passenger seat, and pulled my knees up to my chest. I leaned my head back against the headrest. My father pulled onto the street and we were soon driving down the highway.

Iggy Pop's 'Neighborhood Threat' was on the radio, but I could not seem to close my eyes to his crooning. My father looked straight ahead at the road, but I saw the white-knuckled grip he gave the steering wheel. As much as I wanted to tell him to let me drive, I couldn't find my voice. I wanted to take his pain, if only for a brief moment, help him. I wanted to replace my mother in his eyes, do for him what she couldn't (for once)…if only for a moment.

We kept driving and driving. The road stretched on and on. After about an hour, we pulled off on an exit ramp. After a few turns, I found us in the Foster's parking lot.

We entered and seated ourselves at a window booth. A waitress clad in pink, 50's style waitress garb came over. She took my father's order and soon came back with coffees for the both of us.

Not more than five minutes later, she returned with the dessert. It was large concoction of sugar, frozen cream and more sugar. I could barely remember the last time I had eaten something so grandiose.

My father told me to sit beside him and I didn't have the heart to disoblige him. Besides, it had been a long time since I had sat with my father. I found myself curled into his side, my head on his shoulder. He said nothing, only offered me a spoon. I took a tentative bite of the concoction and my jaw hurt at the amount of sugar. My father smiled at me, and I ate more. In fact, it seemed as if I was not able to stop. He ate some of the dessert, but it seemed as if the cancer even ate away at what he could eat.

He did not say a word as we went through the parking lot to the car. But he smiled at me, and before we entered the car, wrapped an arm around my waist, settling his hand on my stomach.

The cat quieted and stopped squirming.

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	3. Wings

_I told him my name was Echo._

_And that was how I met him. My silent friend. My lifeguardian. The boy with the secrets on his back. The boy who never said what he was called._

"_Someday," he said, "when we are ready, I will give you back your tears."_

_I went to see him every night. We built sand castles with arches and columns and moats and turrets and hidden passageways. I hated to loose the castles, but he nodded and seemed to say, __**This is a part of it,**__ watching the demolished by the waves. We would sit for hours watching the waves break against the shore. Although he was silent I knew he was thinking…Sometimes he played me melodies on his battered mandolin or his old accordion. I just liked to sit near him, watching his hair flop in his face as he strummed or squeezed. I liked to sit close enough so that I could smell him…_

_He must have kissed me that one time, in his way, to save my life. But then he never touched me again…_

_Then Storm gave Echo back her tears, the ones she had given him so long ago, gave them back deep into her womb, where they would become a child who would never doubt. Who would know that magic is belief who would believe._

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On the streets of Manhattan anything is possible. It held just as much magic as Los Angeles, the same kind of magic. Los Angeles. Los Diablos. Everyplace held angels and devils.

I told her my name was Storm.

As she tugged the matted wings, made so long ago, from my back, on those angelic and devilish streets, I could feel the weight they had carried slightly ease itself off my back. We stood on the streets amidst the devils and angels and soon walked back to her apartment.

We had met years before when I had saved her from the waves, which she had sought salvation. That was why I had been at the beach that night. Salvation. Though it was mainly the place I slept, I was trying to find something in the waves. Trying to find some magical place. The streets of Los Angeles didn't quite hold the magic I was looking for, I had thought they might be in the waves. That was when I saw her. **She** was the magic.

She kept coming back to the beach at night. We made sand castles adjourned with tiny, pink seashells. She put so much effort into making the sculptures. She was building that magical place we were both trying to find. She could never seem to see the magic she held in herself. The castles always fell into the waves. When that happened her smiles faded. The magic she was trying to find disappeared in front of her eyes. But it was a part of what was going to happen. I simply nodded.

We sat together on the sand and watched the waves battle. They crashed into each other, cresting with foam. Sometimes I would bring my mandolin and play soft melodies for her. The weathered strings always played a sweet sound. Other times I would play the battered accordion I had picked up at a flea market. It creaked with age when you picked it up, but it crooned a gentle sound all its own.

I had kissed her once upon a time. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when she tried to drown herself. I had not touched her since. I could not. Too much weight. Too many memories. I could not bear the weight of her on top of that.

She had danced for me once. She had wrapped herself up in sheaths and bolts of gauze, and danced. It was a wild danced full of shaking, gyrations, and unruly movements. She saw my sorrow, and they became part of her movements as we both began to relieve the memories that the wings lifted off my shoulders. _A boy crying under a bed in a dark room. A boy shivering from cold, dreaming of sun to burn the chill away. A wound on the inside of his though. A boy on a bus running away from his home to live in a lifeguard stand by the sea, a boy who had pasted wings to his back as the only way he could escape the pain of who he had been before. A boy who could not touch because if he touched he would remember things he needed to forget, reopen wounds he needed to keep sealed. A boy who could be safe and untouched as long as he was an angel, an angel and not a boy._

She was beautiful. Like no other; like a lost mermaid abandoned on land. I told her she was beautiful. Sobs began to wrack her lithe form. She was showing me, giving me a gift. Something she had given no one else.

Her tears.

I could not return such a gift. Not yet.

I found myself in her apartment. The air in the apartment was different. There was a taste of magic. She had finally found it within herself. I would have to found out her journey at a time. I should have helped her. I knew there were things she had gone through that she shouldn't have. But my stories were no different.

A wedding dress (a relative's?) hung against the door of a closet. And as our limbs entangled, I found myself able to return her gift. I cried and cried. As I relieved myself of my tears a spark of magic that I did not know was in myself presented itself. It did not seem like I was able to stop, once I started crying. But I did. And my tears helped to form our daughter, a slight pixie. She believes in magic. She believes in herself, the magic and in belief itself.

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